en shivers
into monosyllables. Yet has this diamond lain neglected with common
stones, and among the innumerable admirers of Hudibras the observation
of this superlative passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim.

No. 61. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1759.

Mr. Minim had now advanced himself to the zenith of critical reputation;
when he was in the pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when
he entered his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates,
who passed their noviciate of literature under his tuition: his opinion
was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet loved to
debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety to
posterity, till it had been secured by Minim's approbation.

Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and munificence by which
the academies of the continent were raised; and often wishes for some
standard of taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from
caprice, prejudice and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of
criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it is
printed, and which shall authoritatively direct the theatres what pieces
to receive or reject, to exclude or to revive.

Such an institution would, in Dick's opinion, spread the fame of English
literature over Europe, and make London the metropolis of elegance and
politeness, the place to which the learned and ingenious of all
countries would repair for instruction and improvement, and where
nothing would any longer be applauded or endured that was not conformed
to the nicest rules, and finished with the highest elegance.

Till some happy conjunction of the planets shall dispose our princes or
ministers to make themselves immortal by such an academy, Minim contents
himself to preside four nights in a week in a critical society selected
by himself, where he is heard without contradiction, and whence his
judgment is disseminated through the great vulgar and the small.

When he is placed in the chair of criticism, he declares loudly for the
noble simplicity of our ancestors, in opposition to the petty
refinements, and ornamental luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair,
and perceives false delicacy daily gaining ground, and sometimes
brightens his countenance with a gleam of hope, and predicts the revival
of the true sublime. He then fulminates his loudest censures against the
monkish barbarity of rhyme; wonders how beings that pr